The Decolonising Madness project is hiring its first post-doctoral fellow!

The position is funded by the ERC project ‘Decolonising Madness: Transcultural Psychiatry, International Order and the Birth of a “Global Psyche” in the aftermath of the Second World War’ (DECOLMAD). Starting date: 1 February 2021.

This is an exciting opportunity to join an innovative and inter-disciplinary research project, which aims to explore the emergence and historical development of the discipline of transcultural psychiatry after WWII and amid decolonisation and to unpick the complex intellectual and logistical relationships between colonialism and post-colonial ‘psy’ disciplines. 

The successful candidate will work closely with the project’s PI Ana Antic and will join a dynamic international research team, based at the Department of, English, German and Romance (ENGEROM).

Qualifications and job description

DECOLMAD is a collaborative project, and the postdoctoral researcher will be a core member of a research team which, in addition to the PI, includes two other postdocs (to be hired in 2021 and 2022) and four research assistants. The successful candidate is expected to work both independently and in collaboration with the research team. He or she should hold a PhD degree in the field of medical humanities, with a focus on the history of colonial and/or post-colonial psychiatry. He or she should have in-depth knowledge of the history of West European psychiatry and its relationships with psychiatric developments in the colonies, and of the history of African and/or Asian psychiatry. Moreover, the candidate will have experience with research in medical and psychiatric archives outside of Europe and needs to be able to do research in English and French.

Within the research team, the candidate will take part in broader intellectual and methodological discussions around the project’s goals and general directions, and will also be expected to design and work on an original research project (either in the form of a monograph or a series of articles). He or she will conduct primary source research in a select range of archives and libraries, analyse the material collected by the team, and take part in designing and implementing oral interviews. Experience with oral interviews and with collaborative work will be an asset. 

The postdoc position is a full-time research position and does not involve any teaching obligations. The candidate is also expected to take an active part in the academic life of the department.

For further information, including more details on the DECOLMAD project, please contact project PI Ana Antic at ana.antic@hum.ku.dk

Please see the University's website for more details about this job opportunity.